Ernest Vincent Wright wrote Gadsby, a 50,100-word story without using the letter “e”. The lipogram gained notoriety and was inspired by a poem and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Wright died in 1939, leaving behind three other published works.
Ernest Vincent Wright was an author who wrote one of the most unique works of 20th century American fiction. His book Gads was a story of over 20 words and 50,000 pages without using the letter “e”.
Ernest Vincent Wright died in 1939, the same year Gadsby was published. Gadsby, his most famous work, is the longest work of fiction written without the letter “e. This method of writing, called constrained writing, is very difficult and gained Wright some notoriety after the book was published. The form of writing is called a lipogram, which is to avoid using a letter or group of letters. Ernest Vincent Wright avoided the letter “e”, the most common letter in the English language.
Gadsby, subtitled Champion of Youth, has been described by its author as “a story of over 50,000 words”. At 50,100 words, Gads is Ernest Vincent Wright’s story of a fictional town after its administration and government are handed over to a youth organization. The interwar city, Branton Hills, was delivered by John Gadsby, the protagonist. Gads is told by an anonymous narrator and includes a long line of characters, none of whom are ever referred to as “he,” “she,” or “they” due to the constraints of the lipogram.
Gads has been credited as a smooth and engaging piece of fiction, without many of the interruptions and loss of momentum of similar pieces. Ernest Vincent Wright wrote the entire book with correct grammar and added to the challenge of him making the entire book in the past tense. The book drew inspiration from Wright’s discovery of a lipogram poem and from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gats and its protagonist, Jay Gatsby.
Ernest Vincent Wright was born in 1873. He published three books before Gadsby, entitled The Marvelous Fairies of the Sun (1896), The Fairies Who Run the World and How They Do It (1903), and Thoughts and Reveries of an American Blue Jacket (1918). Wright, who was a retired naval musician, wrote Gads and found a publisher for it while in a military nursing home in the eight months before he died. He is also the author of “When Father Carves the Duck,” a humorous short poem and a favorite in many homes for Thanksgiving.
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